wonderland of wanderer
by Ryfee
Summary: They're meant to be together and forever apart. — Squall x Rinoa. Semi-AU.
1. I

__For my best friend,  
who thinks steak is one of the  
most awesome things ever invented.

* * *

_You have a key,  
and it opens a door,  
where it leads to though,  
you have to find out yourself._

_But know that,  
I'll be there just beyond the door,  
a mystery longing to be unveiled._

* * *

**wonderland of wanderer**

**I.**

He's nineteen when he meets her.

He's bright, smart, respected by his peers and feared by some, responsible and always concentrates on tasks at hand and never fails. He's never fallen in love—the word itself sounds preposterous and too ambiguous, too vague to define; something he won't be interested in spending his time on. He always prefers logic and facts, after all.

Not until he sees her anyway.

To say that he falls in love at first sight would be ludicrous, and he'll persist that it's anything but _that_—but he'll go as far as admitting that there's something in him, something so diminutive and easily diminished, that stirs at the sight of her. Normally, he would have laughed at the idea (it sounds like something Irvine would blather on and on over dinner, or something Selphie would swap out of her romance dictionary); and really, he wishes he could.

Only he can't.

Maybe it's the way she stands out, the way she moves swiftly among the crowds, evading every single person with almost ethereal nimbleness. Maybe it's the way her bare shoulders glow faint yellows, or how her cerise lips turn up, and how he notices the stars painted on her dark eyes gleam as she comes closer.

"Are you alone by yourself?"

The bracelet around her right hand clinks, almost mellifluously in his ears, and drowns out the rambunctious music and laughter of the party. And all he can see is her smile and eyes, and before long he finds himself in the dance floor, where the silvery moon hits them with light so white it almost turns this girl, this girl he doesn't even know, insubstantial and ghostly… as if she was never there, just dancing in and out of time and dimension.

But it doesn't really matter, he thinks as they waltz for the moon. Her touch may be a little cold, but that's enough proof to tell that she's still present, here in his arms.

The moon is cold and the dance floor is getting deserted when she mutters a thank you and swivels around to leave, and he asks for her name.

She smiles that illusive smile again, as if trying to divulge something, and when she opens her mouth and lets the words free in the chilly night air, he gets shivers.

The jet haired girl walks away from him and this life, away from the moon and its light, and embraces darkness and then is gone from his sight.

That name…

It sounds awfully familiar somehow. Something he's heard, maybe in a book he read during his childhood, or maybe a song he can't quite recall, or a faraway place…

Or did he dream it?


	2. II

**wonderland of wanderer**

**II**.

He is twenty when he meets her again, the girl of dreams and fantasies and secrets. And she still looks like the way he remembers her back then.

Her eyes are stars at the seam, her smile ever present, and she wears blue today.

He sips his coffee and stares at her over the rim of his cup.

"It's good to see you again," she begins, her smirk mischievous. "It's been a while, hasn't it?"

"…yeah."

A giggle. "Still never much of a talker, I see."

He wonders who she truly is. Even under the radiant light of the morning sun which spills all over the café floor in long, golden arcs, she looks as if she belongs to the night, pale and distant.

He wonders if he's met her somewhere before. Because every time he looks into those hazel orbs, he'll start seeing places he thinks he never knows. But they seem familiar… pulling at his heart strings, oddly nostalgic.

The idea, of course, is preposterous, and he directs the momentary inanity—for what is it if not madness, to a man of logic and judgment—to his cup and finishes the remaining of his morning coffee in a gulp. When he looks up again, he finds the other world (of nights and dreams and constellations and mysteries) trapped in a saddened gaze boring into his, searching and finding his soul all at once.

Her touch is cold, contrasting the warm weather of spring.

Involuntarily, he jerks his hand away from hers, not curtly; it has more to do with reflex and his trouble with dealing with physical contacts. He casts his stare downwards, murmurs a quiet 'sorry', but her smile elongates.

"I need to go now." She rises from her seat. "Don't you have work to do?"

His mind reels. He thinks of meetings and papers and guns and swords and blood and war war _war_.

"I do."

"Do you enjoy your work?" The question makes him see corpses and terrified eyes and scattered blood in rubies in his head. He isn't sure what to say, but she precludes any incoming responses from him either way; "be careful out there."

She whirls on her heels and starts to walk away, but he quickly rises from his seat and shouts after her, "wait!"

The black haired girl turns, a questioning look on her visage as he approaches her.

"Do I… What's your name?"

They stare at each other, for how long, he can't be certain.

"Don't you remember?"

"I mean, I _think_ you've told me once before… But it's been a while and I—"

"No. You _know_. You always have, Squall."

And then she leaves, disappearing into the blinding light, golden motes bursting and dancing and swirling in the early spring air, and echoing over and over in his head is but one question:

_(Don't you remember?)_


	3. III

**wonderland of wanderer**

**III**.

In this world, he sails on blue water so dark it's almost black, its depths unknown, and he will drown and taste the murky water, metal and ashes. And then as the surge plunges him deeper and deeper, he'll see faces of men he killed in war, their pale dead eyes a vortex of memories that sucks him whole.

The water is cold and adverse, but it doesn't freeze him, at least. And the deeper he goes, the more he sees, the more troubling everything gets. He realizes that he's becoming terrified then—not by the dead faces, the reproachful stares, the indelible and vivid images of battleground and corpses; it's the fear of being trapped here forever that scares him, never reaching the surface, breathing in reality again.

He is twenty-one when the dark, desolate world becomes less and less unfamiliar with each passing night, and in between war councils and meetings and soldiers to supervise and papers to sign, he decides that the recurring nightmare is remarkably insignificant and completely mundane in a life he lives in.

It is just another night before another meeting with the states when, for once, he doesn't float amidst black water, surrounded by the dead, the supposedly to be forgotten.

He finds himself standing in a flower field. The sky is a glass of mellow orange, static and cloudless. There's someone not far from him, her ebony hair draped across her back, her blue dress flowing down and kissing the flowers around it.

Stepping forward, he opens his mouth to say something. Nothing comes out. The world stays still, but something—a name, sweet like summer—reverberates somewhere in his head, faintly. He calls out again

(_Don't you remember_?)

and she turns around and his surroundings ripple and clutter in a sudden disarray of colors and details. There's the vast space of nothingness and stars, there's a ballroom with high arcs and marble floor, there's a balcony from where the land passes in vandyke brown and verdant blurs beneath—he falls through these all, the places that fade in and out of his vision, chasing one after another in an exotic frenzy. It's like tumbling down the rabbit hole to wonderland.

And then he sees someone in a white suit, floating aimlessly in the middle of nowhere, and the glass that hides her face, keeps her alive, breaks.

He wakes up then, jolting from his bed, and streaming down his cheeks are tears, salty and still warm.

_(Don't you?)_


	4. IV

**wonderland of wanderer**

**IV**.

He is almost twenty-three when the world shatters in pieces of foul play and betrayal and power corrupt, when peace is sought in misery of others and war is the only thing that can bind the decaying world's wounds.

The land stretches out before him in mingled bronze and black, and although he's never been artistic enough to comment on aesthetics, he thinks there is something beautiful about the battlefield. How the soldiers line up for countless of rows, how they stay still waiting for the command to move, like chess pieces, how, in a matter of minutes, they will raise their weapons and focus on that swirl of energy inside them, marching onward simultaneously.

And how, afterward, the ground will no longer be brown and the grass fresh green, but tinted red.

He has long stopped counting kills, for death is ubiquitous in wars. Now, raising blade and slicing a man's body open doesn't feel as nauseating and terrifying as it did before—it just feels like tearing a paper apart, and he wonders if he's cursed for not being remorseful.

The hour grows late and the battle has not yet reached a conclusion. An enemy comes for him; he swerves to the right, aims for an opening, Lionheart ready. With practiced nimbleness and precision, Squall thrusts forward, anticipating the feeling of skull and bones cracking, vigorous sputters of blood—but they never come.

There's a loud grating sound of something being ripped—a very terrible sound. Soon after that, the world seems to slow down, minutes and seconds evaporating. He just watches as his sword tries to make a landing but never does. Then, perplexed and amazed, he realizes that his surroundings have changed into a different setting.

It's almost an identical field, only the sky is a slate gray mirror and the ground a jutting brown carpet, full of dead red leaves and bodies. There are trees scattered around, sporadically, their twigs and branches perforating the sky with skeletal somberness. The world is very still, and he's unsettled by the fact that, despite the bodies on the ground, the air smells of nothing.

What appalls him more than anything else is that someone, alive, is standing before him—he doesn't know how or when she appeared, not that it matters anyway, not when, with utter dismay, he realizes that Lionheart is coming at her.

Her hair is as dark as night, her dress as blue as daybreak sky, time seems to move again, and her dark brown eyes smile

_(It's okay.)_

and his sword descends in a flurry of white, and this time the world bursts into a whirlwind of impeccable white feathers. A blinding light engulfs him, and then he finds himself back in the real world, _his_ battlefield.

He rasps for breath. Below him, the man is already dead, a grotesque gash rendering his face unrecognizable, his chest a gaping flesh.

Someone screeches in the distant.

Squall turns around, trying to regain his stance, breathing heavily. Somewhere in his head, a whisper so soft and silky and sad tells him that it's too late.


	5. V

**wonderland of wanderer**

**V**.

A girl with chestnut curls, barely seventeen, asked her boyfriend if he could take her to the legendary magical flower field, for everyone said it was the most beautiful one in the world, almost like heaven on earth.

The boyfriend glanced at her and snorted, telling her to diminish the idea. When she asked him why, he rolled his eyes and told her the truth: the field, however beautiful it was, was cursed. The townsfolk said it was on that field a huge war that consumed so many lives had happened a long time ago.

When the girl frowned in disbelief, her boyfriend shook his head.

"That place's haunted too. I saw its ghost."

* * *

Here's the flower field of fantasies and illusions.

In the morning, the flowers, dew-speckled, will glint brilliantly under the sun, a thousand sparkling gemstones. The afternoon will make them even more distinguishable, all colors and shapes. Approaching twilight, the flower field will be bathed in elf-light, mellow and gold. At night, it will sleep and she will come.

She wears daybreak on her body, impossibly blue, a hue lighter than the sky. Her hair is dark, her skin is pale, and the silver moon will make her seemingly translucent and out of place.

She walks across the field silently, slowly taking her time, circling around and around until the lady of the night sets and the first splatter of violet smears the sky, and then she will stop as the morning sun swallows her with its luminous light, and where she was just a moment ago is now golden motes that look like pixie dust, a secret, a wonder, a mystery.

Day rises and night falls, seasons change and years pass, and she will always be there in the flower field, always waiting, always searching, always looking for something...

But never finding it.

_..._

* * *

_Disclaimer: FFVIII is not mine._  
_A/N: So this is meant to be read together but "separately"; that's why despite the fic actually being short, I broke them into 5 parts. Writing this was immensely fun, and I'm pretty sure you have questions... But guessing is much more fun, and imagination is such a precious thing... Am I not right?  
But, here are some clues: Time Compression? Intertwined timelines? Time-rip? Intervening dimensions? Your choice. ;)_

_Please tell me what you think, and reviews would be greatly appreciated!_

_- Ryfee_


End file.
